Once again, it is with enormous gratitude that on Thursday, March 3, 2016 at California State University, Northridge, Dr. Henry Oster & co-author Dexter Ford, of The Kindness of the Hangman gave an extraordinary talk about the crafting of Oster's memoir. Thank you is simply not enough to show my utmost appreciation to these two amazing men for the gift they paid CSUN and my students for sharing the challenging journey they traversed in bringing Dr. Oster's story of survival to light.
My literature class was extremely honored to hear Dr. Oster and Dexter Ford discuss the process by which they created this amazing testament to survival, hope and courage. As one student notes:
Seeing Dr. Oster in person was such an incredible and humbling experience. When he was telling his tale it was like reading the book we knew everything he was telling us, but hearing it first hand from him made me realize and understand the importance of so many of the scenes especially [Kristallnacht] the "Night of the [Broken Glass]." It was so moving and powerful what he said and it was ironic that he became an optometrist to help people see clearly. I really appreciated when he said “if you have the guts to listen I’ve got the guts to talk.” When he was talking about how they never imagined things could get worse and after each setback and terrible obstacle there was another and another to the point when he was finally liberated he thought something was still going to go wrong and they would die. To live in that situation and hope and rumors to get you by seems so excruciatingly painful that Oster’s current outlook on life is inspiring in that he has this humorous and gracious attitude.---Nicole Lutes
The Kindness of the Hangman details Oster's witnessing of the decimation and murder of his fellow Jews from Cologne, Germany by the Nazis as well as the destruction of his own family. Oster "hid his mother from the SS in an attic in the Lodz, Poland Ghetto. He
escaped a firing squad in Auschwitz. Endured a death march through the
Polish winter. Formed a life-long friendship in the nightmare barracks
of the Buchenwald concentration camp." At sixteen, Oster was liberated by General Patton's Third Army.
My Writing About Literature students were tasked with writing a comparative essay about
The Kindness of the Hangman and Maus II: A Survivor's Tale And Here My Troubles Began. The idea was to let them critically assess and analyze the differences between a primary source and a secondary source each a retelling of a similar horror and time in history, which continues to defy comprehension. And sadly, as Henry Oster noted, such horrors and inhumanity have not ceased in the past and more recent continuing global conflicts of today. As another student of mine notes:
As an
Armenian-American, it’s especially difficult to live in a country that refuses
to acknowledge the genocide of 1.5 million of your people. America deliberately
refusing to accept our history, is essentially asking us to also deny it as a
fact, and to forget what happened 100 years ago. What happened to the Armenian
people 100 years ago was the first genocide of the 20th century. What Hitler did to the Jews
during WWII was evidence of history repeating itself, of what the Ottoman
Empire did to the Armenians in 1915. ---Aleen Arslanian
Below are some of my other students' essays in response to these chilling tales of heroism, suffering, and hope:
Out of Darkness by Rebecca Starkman
When it comes to the Holocaust, everything we learn is
blanketed in darkness. This darkness
encapsulates an unimaginable horror.
Since the end of World War II, survivors, witnesses, and artists have
used different means in an attempt to explain the tragic events that took
place. Henry Oster’s The Kindness of the
Hangman and Art Spiegelman’s Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles
Began are based on the personal experiences endured in Nazi Europe; Oster using
remembrance and Spiegelman using present tense.
The two works of creative nonfiction use varying differences in style,
prose, and medium; both successfully able to bring understanding and tolerance
to their readers.
In Henry Oster’s The Kindness of the Hangman, the narrator
tells a firsthand account of what happened to him as a child. The author invites us to witness what
happened. The story begins like a
fairytale: “A long time ago, I was a five-year-old German boy. Heinz Adolf Oster” (9). It’s a familiar form of story-telling that we
can all connect to. However, it quickly
becomes a nightmare. Even losing his
citizenship is hard to imagine, and it ultimately becomes the lesser of what he
endures. Oster explains that the
Nuremberg laws, “revoked all Jews’ German citizenship” (28). The facts are delivered with poignancy,
helping the reader connect and process the information given.
Art Spiegelman redefines the literary depth of the comic book
genre. He takes a subject matter and
story that is hard to watch, listen to, read about, or perceive and makes it
accessible to an entirely untapped demographic.
Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began, offers its
readers a new approach to connect with an unimaginable, horrifying piece of
nonfiction. We connect to the graphic
novel via the use of the present tense.
The reader is invited to travel through multiple and changing time
periods. No matter what part of history
we are reliving, it’s told in the present. We become “unstuck in time,” much like Billy
Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse V.
Pilgrim, the novel’s protagonist, travels back in time to Dresden in
1945, where he relives his time as a prisoner of war. In many ways, we are all the Billy Pilgrim of
Slaughterhouse V and the Art of Maus II.
While that helps the reader become part of the story, it also simultaneously
allows for detachment. Traveling through
time is not realistic. This science
fiction element relieves some of the weight distributed by such a heavy story. Between Vladek’s dwindling health and straining
relationship with Art, the tension continuously builds as we travel through the
tale. Similar to Henry Oster’s work, in Maus II, the process of connecting also
aligns with being allowed to detach.
Coauthor of The Kindness of the Hangman, Dexter Ford, offers
historical facts to help the reader connect and better understand the rest of
the world’s involvement during World War II. America has a significant role in how it
affects the birth of Nazi Germany. Eugenics
laws bring the war home, so to speak. Oster
and Ford explain:
In many countries, including Britain and the United States,
the Eugenics movement advanced the idea that it was the right and
responsibility of governments to prevent the “unfit” – pretty much anybody who
didn’t look or act like the people in power – from reproducing (16).
The historic facts help us understand the powerful emotions
that Oster’s memoir conveys.
Spiegelman’s character, Art, invites us to attempt to
understand what it’s like to be the child of a Holocaust survivor. His guilt resounds through his
retelling. A glimpse into his
conversations with Francoise helps us recognize this theme. He confesses: “I know this is insane, but I
somehow wish I had been in Auschwitz with my parents so I could really know
what they lived through! …I guess it’s some kind of guilt about having had an
easier life than they did” (16.2A). Art
is desperately trying to connect and relate to what his parents went
through. As readers, we are attempting
to do the same thing. Even more
difficult than processing the horror of the story is the task of accepting that
what we’re reading is fact, not fiction.
It represents an even bigger blow to our psyche. We’re all programmed to ask ourselves: “How
could this happen?” Knowing that Art is
grappling with the same internal conflict adds a form of intimacy to the
narrative. We aren’t coping alone. As the creator, he goes on to ask himself:
“Sigh. I feel so inadequate trying to
reconstruct a reality that was worse than my darkest dreams” (16.3A). He is acknowledging his own fallibility in
attempting to recreate something he can never wholly understand. Further, using a medium previously marketed
namely toward children and teenage boys can be construed as making light of a
historical horror that shouldn’t be taken with any lightness. In bringing his father’s memories of the
Holocaust out of the deepest darkness, a new audience is able to see it
slightly more.
Henry Oster allows us to glimpse through a window into his
darkest fears, his regret, his sadness, and his drive to survive. The intimacy offers a way to get close to
what we are reading. He tells us how he
feels physically and mentally: “When you are that scared, exhausted and
assaulted, your brain just tends to shut down, to go into survival mode”
(72). Oster helps us understand how he
made it as far as he did. This is the
closest we can get to what he went through.
As readers, being a part of the action draws us in. In the beginning, Art and Francoise are
discussing the writing of Maus II. We
aren’t just given an invitation to be a part of the present, we are
experiencing the process of writing. Art
says: “I’ve got it!...Panel one: My father is on his exercycle…” (12.1A). He offers a piece of the writing process to
the reader. We can see his creative
wheels turning on the page. The inner
turmoil he faces while struggling to successfully execute his work is revealed.
Offering a window into how he grappled
with the process of creating his art is one attempt to bring the reader closer
to the work. We become a part of this
process.
The Kindness of the Hangman offers no buffer for the
information being received. It has to be
told as a story from the past. As
readers, we cannot be invited to partake as if it is occurring while we
experience it. We can’t be in it; it is
too overwhelming and thus couldn’t be processed. Dr. Oster offers us a way in through his
powerful, albeit devastating feeling being recollected. We are not feeling it with him, but we are
feeling his remembering. This is
remarkably apparent as he recounts the one memory he has never told
before. He watches a man die in front of
him and awaits his own death: “He fell back on top of me, and I felt a pain in
my knee, and then I was under a pile of thrashing, heaving, dying men”
(96). If we were feeling this with him,
the reaction would be one continuous, long scream. The distance is needed to process the
emotion.
In Maus II, Spiegelman creates a different kind of
detachment. Art has to process Vladek’s
impossible life story just as we do. The
Holocaust is an impossible piece of history to imagine. In depicting the events, as Vladek tells
them, using mice and other animals to represent people and scenes, Spiegelman
gives us a way to process what we’re being told. It makes everything easier to take in. We can open our minds with more ease and
accept what’s being told. This is seen
in the image of Art sitting atop the massive pile of the dead Jewish bodies in
the concentration camps (41.3A). By
depicting what he’s told as sketched dead mice, he’s able to share how he copes. Even the image of dead mice is hard to
accept. He sits on top of them as he
grapples with accepting all of the success and fame he’s earned from the
thousands of dead mice that haunt him.
Art literally cowers behind a mask of guilt and sadness, and questions
his success. He recounts his success due
in part to his father’s hell: “At least fifteen foreign editions are coming
out. I’ve gotten 4 serious offers to
turn my book into a T.V. special or movie. (I don’t wanna.) In May 1968 my mother killed herself. (She left no note.)” (41.3A). Art feels like he is making money off of his
mother’s suicide. The guilt of not being able to understand rivals how he feels
about profiting off of what his parents endured. The difficulty of telling someone else’s
story is revealed as Art tells some of his own.
The Kindness of the Hangman is a first person account via a
primary source, whereas Maus II uses dialogue between characters combined with
the used of comic strip panels, to recount the events delivered by a secondary
source. Two strikingly different mediums
are used to bring understanding to a hell we never witnessed. The medium is a crucial catalyst for how this
information is received. Both works
offer varying methods to help the reader connect and detach in order to
understand and process the personal stories we are invited to experience.
Works Cited:
Oster, Henry, and Dexter Ford. The Kindness of the Hangman.
Manhattan Beach: Higgins Bay
Press, 2014. Print.
Spiegelman, Art. Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My
Troubles Began. New York:
Pantheon Books, 1991. Print.
_________________________________________
Of Maus and Man by Jake R. Rarick
Out
from the black smoke of the death camp crematoriums and miasmic dust of
unceremonious mass graves, an immutable ghost would forever haunt the
souls of witnesses and survivors, a lingering presence of guilt, loss, and
despair. At the end of the second great war, the genocide of the Jews marked a
grim awakening in the modern world — recognition that there are no limits as to
the evil of man. After such unimaginable horror and degradation, as victims
began to rebuild their broken lives, many were unable to articulate their
experiences or properly express their memories — a fact which further
establishes personal accounts of the Holocaust to be especially invaluable and
undeniably profound. Two such compelling works are the autobiography, The
Kindness of the Hangman by Henry Oster, and the graphic memoir, Maus II: A
Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman, which both employ a variety of elements to
poignantly and eloquently communicate the importance of humor, determination,
and hope in even the darkest of times. Although these unique pieces differ in
structure and style, Oster utilizing direct language through his own
uninterrupted perspective while Spiegelman presents a nonlinear interpretation
of his father, both authors maintain a certain amount of levity so as to
cushion their words for the sake of irony, accessibility, and overall
effect.
To
begin, The Kindness of the Hangman is the tragic yet inspirational story of
Henry Oster, a survivor of the infamous Buchenwald concentration camp, and the
only remaining Jew from his hometown of Cologne, Germany. Transcribed by writer
Dexter Ford, the book is an unaltered account of the life of Dr. Henry Oster,
of his experience as a young prisoner of Buchenwald and Auschwitz. With
uncluttered and straightforward language, Oster candidly and thoughtfully
guides the reader through his youth as a Jew in Nazi Germany — a journey of
inconceivable hardship, directly relayed by the very man who lived it. For
example, as he describes only his own history and observations, his narrative
is recognizably devoid of dialogue, save for the occasional paraphrase. In one
instance, as Oster and a group of fellow boys are loaded into trucks toward
Auschwitz, he depicts a scattered assortment of undefined voices: “‘Where are
we going?’ ‘Are they going to put us to work?’ ‘Are they going to gas us all?’
‘Shoot us?’” (Oster 80). Here, much is delegated to the imagination of the
reader, his or her own perception of the event, which cleverly allows for an
air of palpable confusion and haze, the mess of outside voices acting as a
detached surrogate for the speaker’s own deliberation and concerns. Moreover,
this singular point of view lends itself to a patent sense of loneliness within
the text, unassuaged by the usual fulfillment of drama between characters
sharing a distinct scene; in its confinement to the mind and memory of its
author, the account projects the isolation and uncertainty of an existence
where hatred and distrust consume the essence of many men. Therefore, without
the distraction of speculative exposition or the burden of wrangling with
multiple characters and their viewpoints, The Kindness of the Hangman is free
to maintain a stable connection with the reader — intimate, undemanding, and
enlightening, exposing the individual emotion and knowledge of an individual
man. This clear and unchanging point of view contrasts with that of Maus II,
wherein the author chronicles the survival and endurance of his late father.
Interpreting
multiple perspectives within his memoir, Spiegelman is able to examine his
relationship with his father while simultaneously analyzing himself as an
artist. This less direct connection to the Holocaust, conjoined with the fact
that Spiegelman portrays Jewish prisoners as anthropomorphic mice, somewhat
hinders the work from being as attached and emotionally genuine as the
firsthand narration of Oster. Nevertheless, the dark comic book, Maus II, is a
complex interweaving of father and son, through which the author can transition
from alternate points of view in a blurring of time and space. At a moment in
the story where Spiegelman questions his own identity and his authority to
display his father in such a distinct, cartoonish fashion, he draws himself as
a child, struggling to understand the hell through which his father, Vladek,
had endured in Auschwitz. In speaking to his psychiatrist, he notes, “Some part
of me doesn’t want to draw or think about Auschwitz. I can’t visualize it
clearly, and I can’t begin to imagine what it felt like” (46, 1A). Explaining
the experiential disconnect between his subject, the macabre drawings and
authentic accents in dialogue represent an inability to decipher his father in
a manner that fairly recreates his life through words and graphics. Indeed,
Spiegelman broods on this throughout the memoir, wrestling diligently to
understand the truth of the Holocaust, to do his father justice in his
representation. His dual perspectives offer the reader the relatable cause of
comprehending and empathizing with the immense suffering of a victim like
Vladek, an accessible form that ties together profoundly separate worlds.
Contrary to the typical structures of a historical narrative, Spiegelman
approaches a personal and ambiguous psychology, tackling an abstract sense of
guilt along with the complexity of the writing process itself — a cogent
amalgamation of enthralling, cinematic scenes that perform as a noticeably
cathartic exercise for the author. Overall, the multiple perspectives of the
book provide for a mosaic of observation that form together to explain the
complex relationship between a father and son, the hardship of a Holocaust
survivor, and the hurdles in discussing either.
Though
the tales of Maus II and Kindness of the Hangman differ substantially in
structure and perspective, both discuss the sadistic nature of the Nazis while
still maintaining a life affirming levity. In fact, Spiegelman and Oster show
an optimistic sense of humor despite and due to the dehumanization and dread of
the past. With Spiegelman’s work, for instance, cartoon mice take the place of
Jews while the Nazis are represented as cats; playing off a symbolic cat and
mouse dynamic, along with a jab at the dehumanization of the Jews during the
Holocaust, the comic adds a sinister yet somewhat fantastical, removed tone. As
the book opens, a joking Spiegelman is spending his summer with his wife,
Francoise — a scene of joy and humor in which they joke and discuss how he
should draw her: as a mouse or frog, she being both French and Jewish
(Spiegelman 11). By beginning such a nightmarish tale with a loving and
lighthearted picnic conversation, Spiegelman eases the reader into his life.
Similarly, Oster begins his story with a patient description of his childhood,
that his “was a comfortable, normal life” while joking about what clothes he
wore (Oster 9-10). In these introductions, both authors contrast moments of
peace with imminent doom; these scenes and images add to the accessibility of
each piece, resisting any inclination to overwhelm the reader by directly burying
their text in bitter lamentation or concern for humanity. Besides this, both
authors maintain their humor throughout each tale. Later in Maus II, Spiegelman
draws himself sitting at his desk, atop a mangled pile of corpses, juxtaposed
with butting reporters who reduce him to the size of a child (42, top). These
symbols, mixed with a perturbed irony, challenge his feelings of guilt by
coating them in a dark, shocking humor. Meanwhile, Oster is less bold in his
approach than is Spiegelman, who adds a liveliness and adorability through his
cartoons. As Oster speaks of his past, his simple and conversational tone makes
his work just as accessible as Spiegelman’s comic book. The chapter titles, for
example, are mostly sarcastic or playfully euphemistic considering the material
within them. Rock and roll song titles sneak their way into a few of the
chapters, while chapter twelve is cleverly titled, “The Calculus of Soup” (51).
Though most of his humor is evidently subtle but striking, these titles keep
things light, like interwoven signposts that act as amusing distractions for
the reader. In the end, both stories incorporate playful language, without
detracting from their messages. As these tales prove, humor is a powerful
weapon against tragedy, something that allows for readers to access an
important work that they might not otherwise have been able to stomach or
understand.
Overall,
though Oster and Spiegelman utilize similar methods to tell their woeful
histories of mass extermination, Maus II is concerned more with an
interpretation of character while The Kindness of the Hangman is most focused
on plot, unfiltered and authentically conversational in tone. Eloquently, both
are tales that express potent historical truth and purpose, asking solemnly
that the reader not forget the lessons within. The differing perspectives
provided by both stories are crucial for humanity’s understanding of the
Holocaust, their diversity a representation of the diversity of people as a
whole.
Works Cited:
Oster, Henry, and Dexter Ford. The Kindness of the Hangman. Manhattan
Beach, CA: Higgins Bay Press. 2014.
Print.
Spiegelman, Art. Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My
Troubles Began. New York: Pantheon Books.
1991. Print.
_________________________________________
The
Burden of Survival: A Comparative Thematic Analysis of Maus vol. II (1991) and The
Kindness of the Hangman (2014)by Antonio Manriquez
The graphic memoir
Maus vol. II: And Here My Troubles Began
(1991) by Art Spiegelman and the memoir
The
Kindness of the Hangman (2014) by Henry Oster and Dexter Ford share in
common the accounts of male survivors of the Holocaust, along with the weight,
burden, and obligations of its storytellers to accurately represent experiences
that only a small percentage of those who suffered as victims survived. Both
stories share specific detailed depictions of the brutality of the
protagonists’ capturers, the relentless struggle for their survival, and their
resolute ability to retain a sense of hope. Both texts are transparent about
the source of the stories coming from survivors who have delivered their
stories decades after the incidents have taken place. The reasons for and
importance of these stories to be told are left either unspoken, subtly
mentioned, or left to be deduced only by the fact that they exist.Spiegelman, in his
graphic self-characterization, is asked by a reporter about what message he
intended his audience to receive from the first volume. He answers, “a message?
I dunno…” (Spiegelman 202.2A). Oster and Ford do not reveal any conflict of
guilt with Dr. Oster’s survival or the purpose of the retelling of the story.
Aside from the fact, learned from external sources, that he donates a great
deal of time telling his story at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles,
California, a thematic element is made obvious through the use of historical
context and comparative recent events. Dr. Oster and Mr. Ford have created
their text to inform and educate readers of the catalyst of the human
atrocities so that a continued effort to make the world more peaceful has
another resource to support it. Their interest is not solely with the survival
of the Jewish people, but with the tolerance and survival of all people, as
argued in the statement,
“Everything
would be great”, they always seem to say. “If it wasn’t for ‘them’”. ‘Them’ can
be anyone. Blacks. Jews. Latinos. The Irish. The Italians. Muslims. Immigrants.
People who go to college. People who don’t go to college. Elitists. Welfare
recipients. Gays. Union Workers. Even Women. Anybody who is not “us”. (Oster
and Ford 15)
Frustrated by a
combination of his inability to handle the press, his inability to express the
purpose of writing the text, and his internal conflict with multiple forms of
guilt, Spiegelman seeks help from his therapist, Pavel who, like his father, is
also a Holocaust survivor. In a statement that challenges his patient, Pavel says,
“look at how many books have already been written about the Holocaust. What’s
the point? People haven’t changed… Maybe they need a newer, bigger, Holocaust”
(Spiegelman 205.2B). If Spiegelman, struggling with his writer’s block, was to
accept this idea as more than a philosophical probing, the text would not
exist. Spiegelman, the character is not deterred from his goal of completing
the second volume. This hyperbolic exchange between him and Pavel is successful
in guiding Spiegelman to channel the energy of his guilt and focus on the
continuation of his work.
Dr. Oster demonstrates
a similar dichotomy that Spiegelman, in the text, and his father Vladek, in the
story, have of unrelenting hopefulness despite seemingly impossible odds to
escape doom and destruction. Vladek “helped a Frenchman to also organize a
shirt so we could both got always soup” (254.3C), and earlier helps his close
friend Mandelbaum with a spoon, new shoes and a belt, bringing Vladek to admit
“He was so happy, he was crying… and I started also crying with him”
(Spiegelman 194.3B). Yet he advises his wife, Anja, “I BEG you Anja—keep
yourself strong. For my sake” (Spiegelman 216.3A) and shows a surprising
prejudice towards a black hitchhiker that brings Spiegelman to burst out,
“That’s OUTRAGEOUS! How can you of all people be such a racist! You talk about
blacks the way Nazis talked about the Jews!” (259.3A). Oster demonstrates the
dichotomy by at once going back on a promise to never set foot in Germany
again, by visiting his hometown of Cologne “in the summer and fall of 2011 —
the 70th anniversary of the deportations from Cologne to Lodz”
(Oster and Ford 29) and gave a speech in German, a language he had not spoken
in 70 years, and delivering a message that contains both a yearning of hope,
but a pessimistic and practical outlook. “When these horrible events took
place, the world failed to understand how seemingly civilized and cultured
people could allow themselves to be so willingly and tragically misled. We try
very hard, but still fail to understand this today. And we can be sure that we
will fail to understand it in the eternal future” (Oster and Ford 212).
The two extremes
of fighting through hopelessness and a guilty burden leading to the sharing of
an important message for the sake of a better world lead me in my analysis to
search for a single unifying element that caused Dr. Oster and Vladek to have
what was necessary to survive, but not only survive, but to hesitate to remain
silent and bury the dark memories of their pasts. I am not satisfied with the
answer merely being luck. It must be more. I argue that it was the rarest speck
of human kindness that Dr. Oster was the recipient of, which the text was
titled after, bread from two brothers who had the duty to hang prisoners in the
Ghetto. Oster is able to justify it by recalling, “I guess they gave it to us
to ease their consciences a little bit” (Oster and Ford 65).
In Maus, Vladek builds rapports with those
he is able to make deals and trade with. He gives lessons to a kapo, who has the
foresight to learn English and explains, “Now the Allies are bombing the Reich.
If they win this war, it will be worth something to know English” (Spiegelman
192 bottom). In return for those lessons, Vladek is given access to rich food
and clean clothing. He is later able to use his skills to trade the service of
shoe repair for favors. These are not enough to convince me that they are the
catalyst for an unrelenting belief that there is a hopeful goodness that has
the power to save lives. It is earlier in the story as Vladek arrives in
Auschwitz, crumpled on the floor in despair, he is treated to the kindness of a
Polish priest who eases his mind by reading the tattooed numbers on his arm as
though they were a fortune in his palm or tarot cards. Finding connections
relating to Valdek’s faith, the priest concludes his reading with “I can’t know
if I’ll survive this hell, but I’m certain you’ll come through all this alive!”
(188.4A).
Throughout the
time I have spent in study and analysis of these two texts, there has been a
connection to the current state of American society, particularly in the
political arena with the 2016 presidential election. It was Dr. Oster in a
phone interview presented by a classmate whom I heard first make the comparison
of Republican candidate Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. I have been for almost
six months prior to that, getting heavily invested in learning more about how I
could make a difference to improve my community and society by understanding
more about politics and government. I have been very much inspired by the
message of Democratic candidate Senator Bernard Sanders, who has had a history
of running, what I did not think existed, a clean campaign. The lack of
negativity and the reliance on the goodness of humanity to create or steer the
federal government to be more responsible for the needs of the weakest members
of our society sincerely inspires me to be a kinder, happier person. The texts
I have analyzed share another connection to American government and policies,
beyond the events Dr. Oster and Mr. Ford intersperse in their text, is the part
of Senator Sanders’ family history that I now believe have shaped who he is and
the message he spreads. Senator Sanders’ father’s family had all been killed in
the Holocaust. I am led to believe, as stated in my arguments above, that those
who have been given the kindness of a priest, a hangman, or the chance of
survival, feel a burden of that survival to do everything in their power,
beyond all rational logic and forces against their goals, to educate,
demonstrate, and illustrate what humanity is capable of, both good and bad.
Fueled by depression, guilt, nightmares, and cultural obligation, Dr. Henry
Oster, Art Spiegelman, and Bernard Sanders use the weight of the burden of
survival to make this world a better place.
Works Cited:
Oster, Henry, and Dexter Ford. The Kindness of the Hangman. Manhattan
Beach, CA: Higgins Bay Press. 2014.
Print.
Spiegelman, Art.
Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My
Troubles Began. New York: Pantheon
Books.
1991. Print.
_________________________________________
Luck and Resources: Vladek Spiegelman
and Henry Oster’s Survival of Auschwitz
by Dan
Sellery
Art
Spiegelman's graphic memoir Maus II: A
Survivors Tale and Henry Oster’s The Kindness of
the Hangman are harrowing stories of Holocaust survival. Speigelman
recreates his father, Vladek’s, experience in Auschwitz and Buchenwald through
animation and dialogue, while Henry (with the help of Dexter Ford) recounts
through more traditional prose his childhood as a German Jew throughout
Hitler’s reign of terror, including his time in the same infamous concentration
camps. Though both men endure the Holocaust in different ways and under
different circumstances, both Vladek Spiegelman and Henry Oster survive the horror
by utilizing a distinct combination of remarkable resourcefulness and abundant
luck. Ordinarily, I would only refer Vladek and Henry by their last names, but
in order to maintain consistency and avoid confusion with the two Spiegelmans,
I refer to them by their first names throughout.
Opportunistic
is a strange word to use when referring to the Holocaust. Circumstances were
far from opportune for Jewish prisoners of the Nazi Reich, but within the
context of such utter hell, Vladek Spiegelman and Henry Oster make the most of
what little opportunity they have. With so little food given to prisoners,
obtaining nourishment is crucial to the survival effort. Vladek explains about
meals at Auschwitz that “One time a day they gave a soup from
turnips. To stand near the first of the line was no good. You got only
water…Near the end was better—solid things to the bottom floated. But too far
to the end it was also no good…because many times it could be no soup anymore” (Spiegelman, 49.2A,B). Early in his imprisonment, Vladek observed the value
of something as simple as a soup line. After observing the nature of being fed,
he strategically places himself in a position to get the most calories possible
from the rare and meager meals.
By the time Henry arrives at Auschwitz, he’d been under
Nazi control for years and had mastered many of the smaller details, such as
what he calls “the calculous of soup” (51). Henry gives an almost identical
account to Vladek’s, but from the Lodz ghetto years earlier. He illustrates
that, “you didn’t want to be at the front of the line, because all the good
parts of the soup would settle to the bottom, and all you would get would be
liquid. And you didn’t want to be at the end of the line, because there was no
guarantee that if this can ran out, there would be another” (Oster and Ford
52). Of the many parallels in each text, this is the most similar. Above all,
their accounts of the soup demonstrate the savviness of both survivors. They
employ tremendous sensibilities for observation and strategy. The agony of slow
starvation is incomprehensible for those of us that have never experienced it,
but the necessity of every extra calorie is apparent through the fact that both
men made it out of Auschwitz alive.
Another resource both Vladek and Henry use to their
advantage is their knowledge of languages. Their simple ability to communicate
with the right people at the right times saves them from certain extermination.
Vladek, the older of the two, had developed a very astute business acumen as
well. Combining those two skills, he manages to improve his overall conditions
at Auschwitz on several occasions. The Polish capo of his bunk happened to want
to learn English, and he is one of the few prisoners that speaks Polish and
English. Seizing this chance to improve his situation proves extremely
fruitful. Vladek describes these conditions noting that, “I had it still happy
there. For me it was not yet the end. Newcomers were afraid from me. I
looked like a big shot and the capo kept me close” (Spiegelman, 35.3).
He was better fed and better dressed than the rest of the Jewish prisoners.
Utilizing his knowledge of the English and Polish languages not only preserves
his life, but improves it.
Likewise, Henry is in Birkenau wasting his days away with a
looming death seeming inevitable. Yet, Henry evades the inevitable by
uncharacteristically volunteering during a selection by yelling out that he
speaks German. Though being a German-speaking Jew made Henry few friends among
the Nazis or the Polish Jews, his ability to communicate with his evil captors
curries enough favor with them to save him from Birkenau. After being selected
to work in the stables at Auschwitz I, Henry describes that, “after all these
days and nights sleeping with my fellow prisoners like rats, the warm smell of
hay and horse urine and manure actually felt reassuring. It smelled rich. It
smelled more like life than death” (82). Hay and horse droppings equate to
life. As dire as that sounds, it means survival for Henry. At the very least,
it’s an improvement upon the overpowering stench of burning bodies throughout
the rest of the camp. For Henry, speaking German may very well have been the
difference between life and death.
Each
survivor’s ability to speak life-saving
languages is a combination of luck and resourcefulness. They’re fortunate to be
in situations that require those skills and they’re equally lucky that nobody
else with those skills takes their places. I’m certain many prisoners that
spoke German, Polish, Yiddish, English, French, or whatever else, weren’t able
to employ it for their self-preservation. Last words were uttered by thousands
of people in dozens of languages at Auschwitz, but to no avail. Perhaps, many
that didn’t make it, didn’t have the courage necessary to step forth when
opportunities were presented. Calculated risks and making the exact right moves
at the exact right times are paramount to living.
Frugality
is another strange term to use when referring to the Holocaust. When people
have nothing, how can they be frugal with it? Somehow, both Vladek and Henry
find a way. Shortly after discussing the soup strategy, Vladek reveals that, “one time each day they gave to us a small bread, crunchy
like glass. The flour they mixed with sawdust together—we got one little brick
of this what had to last the full day. Most gobbled it right away, but I always
saved a half for later” (Spiegelman 49.3). Experiencing the excruciating hunger
that the Jews faced in Auschwitz, saving food for later was undoubtedly a difficult
and painful thing to do. Yet, somehow, Vladek’s instinct to survive told him to
ration what little food he received.
Living
and dying came down to such minuscule amounts. Henry largely describes the
advantages of working in the stables in terms of food. Working with the horses
means having access to the smallest of scraps. Consuming those scraps means
risking life, but when death seems inevitable, gaining any little advantage is
essential. Henry hides small carrots and anything else he can get his hands on
to save for later eating. Henry articulates the direness of his situation,
recounting that “it was basically a competition
between me and the horse. You can’t eat the clover flowers. But the green
clover leaves would give us just a little more nourishment, nourishment the
others couldn’t get. That’s how we survived, myself and the other stable boys”
(Oster and Ford 87). Again, resourcefulness and luck are the major factors in
survival. Henry and the other stable boys have the gumption and smarts to sneak
and hide small bits of food, knowing the smallest amounts might be the
difference between life and death, but they also had the luck of being in a
position to acquire those extra little bits of life-granting food.
There’s no shortage of adjectives to describe Vladek and
Henry’s survival of Auschwitz—miraculous, remarkable, incredible,
unconscionable, unfathomable—the list goes on. As great a role as
resourcefulness plays, much of their survival hinged on luck alone. Surrounded
by indiscriminate killing, no amount of desperation or hard work can preserve
life on its own. Henry notes of the Nazis on several occasions that “they will
shoot first and ask questions later” (Oster and Ford 89). This is the most
difficult part of either story for me to reconcile. In no way do I wish to
diminish the accomplishment of survival that either man achieved. Their
strength is something unquantifiable that I can never dream of, and hopefully
never have to. That said, neither man makes it out of Auschwitz without ample
luck on their side. Sometimes it was in conjunction with their abilities, and
other times it was as simple as the SS pointing a stick to the left or the
right.
Vladek poignantly states that “if you want to live, it’s
good to be friendly” (Spiegelman 62.2A). While I agree whole-heartedly, I must
respond by saying it’s better to be lucky. If Vladek’s first capo didn’t care
about learning English, there’s a very real possibility that he only leaves
Auschwitz through the crematoria. He survives numerous work and death
selections under the protection of that capo. Likewise, Henry escapes death by
divine intervention, or rather, (seeing as how neither of us believe in a God
willing to allow something like the Holocaust to happen) amazing circumstances
of good fortune. Luck is another terrible concept to try to examine within the
context of the Holocaust. Being a Jew in Germany during the 1930s is hardly
lucky. Losing one’s entire family to frenzied racism via starvation, bullets,
and gas chambers is quite the opposite of lucky. Yet, somehow, luck plays a key
role in Henry’s survival. The SS points right instead of left. Dozens of people
stand in front of him taking bullets while he manages to escape a massacre. He
stands at the front of a train car while those behind him are strafed by allied
aircraft fire. We would be reading someone else’s story if any of a number of
instances had played out even a little bit differently.
The unquantifiable nature of luck and resourcefulness is
the most difficult part of drawing conclusions from these two stories. Being
lucky but not resourceful results in death. Being resourceful but not lucky
results in death. Dealing with genocide on such a large scale leaves little
room for anything beyond acknowledgment and heartbreak. Though I can point to
Vladek and Henry as success stories—proof that the Nazi ideology lost—I
struggle to cope with the utter devastation that surrounded them. Thanks to
their good fortune and incredible resourcefulness, we have the good fortune of
being able to know their stories and share them in the hope that what they
endured never happens again. The sad truth, however, is that it has happened
again. It’s happening right now and will continue to happen until we find a way
to limit suffering and end hatred.
Works
Cited:
Oster, Henry, and Dexter Ford. The
Kindness of the Hangman. Manhattan Beach: Higgins Bay Press.
2014. Print.
Spiegelman, Art. Maus II: A
Survivor’s Tale. New York: Pantheon Books. 1991. Print.
